Hegemony, and value construction In Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains Of The Day and Never Let Me Go : a Marxist reading

Download

index.pdf

Date

2013

Author

Yazgı, Cihan

Metadata

Show full item record

Item Usage Stats

1060
views

578
downloads

This thesis analyses the hegemonic processes that are maintained by traditions, institutions and formations by discussing over the process of value construction the characters in Kazuo Ishiguro’s two novels are engaged in. A Marxist approach is used along the way and the discussions over the novels were taken as an opportunity of underlining the necessity of a Marxist approach towards art in order to make use of its propaedeutic value and extract the hegemonic substance the artwork inheres. This thesis seeks to use the propaedeutic value of Ishiguro’s novels to point out to the hegemony that is prevailing over our actual lives. It argues that the person always has to relate himself to a society, and hence that society and ‘the hegemonic’ forces operant on that society come to shape his values and judgements at the end. In the end, what this study finds are the traces of the hegemonic processes that are hidden behind the individualized experience of Ishiguro’s characters. Neither Stevens, nor Kathy can be underestimated to their individual choices. It is the hegemony, and the tradition and the institutions of that hegemony that construct their existence. Also, it is found out that it is again the hegemony that shapes the existence of Ishiguro’s value judgements and his works’ value schemes that are studied here.

Subject Keywords

Hegemony., Social values in literature, Marxist philosophy, English literature

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12615521/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/22527

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

A bakhtinian analysis of William Golding’s rites of passage: heteroglossia, polyphony and the carnivalesque in the novel Tuğlu, Utku; Sönmez, Margaret Jeanne M.; Department of English Literature (2011) This thesis analyzes William Golding’s Rites of Passage using a detailed examination of the Bakhtinian concepts of heteroglossia, polyphony and the carnivalesque to investigate the points of mutual illumination and confirmation between Bakhtin’s ideas and Golding’s novel. Therefore the method of analysis is divided between a close study of Rites of Passage and an equally close examination of Bakhtin’s ideas. The Bakhtinian concepts studied in this thesis are central to his idea of language and theory of the...
Postmodernist historical novels: Jeanette Winterson’s and Salman Rushdie’s novels as historiographic metafictions Kırca, Mustafa; İçöz, Nursel; Department of English Literature (2009) The aim of this dissertation is to study postmodern historical novels, which are labeled “historiographic metafictions” (Hutcheon 1989: 92), in terms of their allowing for different voices and alternative, plural histories by subverting the historical documents and events that they refer to. The study analyzes texts from feminist and postcolonial literature, Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion and Sexing the Cherry, and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and Shame as examples in which the transgression of bo...
Dickens’s Bleak house and The Old curiosity shop: a reading through things Eratalay, Etkin Bilen; Sönmez, Margaret Jeanne M.; Department of English Literature (2015) This thesis analyzes Dickens' Bleak House and The Old Curiosity Shop from the perspective of thing theory as expounded by Bill Brown to explore how objects and other material entities are represented, and what kinds of meanings and values they take upon themselves within the narratives. In addition to making use of insights of thing theory, this thesis also makes references to the concepts of the carnivalesque, the grotesque and the uncanny since they are integral parts of Dickens' portrayal of the material...
Nomad thought in Peter Reading’s Perduta gente and Evagatory and Maggie O’sullivan’s In the house of the shaman and Palace of reptiles Türe Abacı, Özlem; Birlik, Nurten; Department of English Literature (2015) This study aims to explore the processes of becoming in Peter Reading’s Perduta Gente and Evagatory and Maggie O’Sullivan’s In the House of the Shaman and Palace of Reptiles by concentrating on the spatial, corporeal and performative politics in their poetry within a theoretical framework based on Deleuze and Guattari’s nomad thought and their revisionary ideas on the politics of body, space and subjectivity. This study also investigates how nomadism as a critical category enables an exploration of the form...
An analysis of metafictional self-reflexivity in laurence sterne's the life and opinions of tristram shandy and William Gass' willie masters' lonesome wife Okuroğlu, Şule; İçöz, Nursel; Department of English Literature (2005) This thesis evaluates metafictional self-reflexivity, and presents it within the scope of certain structuralist and post-structuralist approaches especially by referring to William Gass̕ definition of metafiction and Raymond Federman̕s theories on the devices of metafiction. Then aspects of the works of William Gass̕ Willie Master̕s Lonesome Wife and Laurence Sterne̕s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy are discussed within this framework.

Citation Formats

C. Yazgı, “Hegemony, and value construction In Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains Of The Day and Never Let Me Go : a Marxist reading,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2013.